Tag: Instructional Leadership

102 Review, Issue 24: Clear Expectations

Posted on by mrkobot in Principal's Blog

March 18th, 2016

“What is the criteria for my child to become a student of the month??”

-Dolphinblue33, commenting on Instagram

 

Clear expectations are vital for success;  all the will and skills in the world wouldn’t matter unless we know exactly what we should be doing with them. My priority this first year is to seek out the expectations we must continue to maintain, and then identify new expectations that should be put in place for next year.

Adhering to the concept of “Power of Simplicity” as laid out by Schmoker in Focus, all of 102’s expectations—old and new—will be framed by the following three questions:

1. What are we teaching? (Curriculum, expectation for students)

2. How are we teaching? (Instructional practices, expectation for teachers)

3. How will we monitor student learning? (Accountability for results, expectation for school)

We need to organize ourselves for maximum impact before we can answer these questions. I will meet with each grade team to discuss our vision for next year, and teachers will be receiving next year’s preference sheets soon after.

Weekly Highlights (Materials Edition): 

$500 Discretionary Funds for All Teachers: All teachers will be allocated $500 of discretionary funds to purchase supplies for their classrooms. This is made possible by the money we received as a Title I school (we serve low-income families), and you should consider purchasing items that can make an impact for our families. More information will be given later this week.

All Technology Requests Approved: All technology requests from last week’s survey have been approved and will be purchased shortly. You should not use the $500 discretionary funds for these items.

 Air Conditioning for All: A/C units will be installed in all classrooms in 102’s historic wing. We are pushing to have them installed before it gets warm, and I’ll make an announcement once a date is set. For those of you who’ve taught for years without air conditioning in a NYC room with 32 students, I thank (and salute) you. It won’t happen again as long as both you and I are at 102.

 

New Interactive Flat Panel TVs: 13 rooms will soon be equipped with new interactive flat panel touchscreen TVs. Speech and SETSS rooms will receive re-purposed Smartboards. Install date TBD. (Note: Smartboard’s predatory business model is no longer viable for our school, and we will continue to replace them with better and cheaper alternatives.)

Things You Should Know:

 Please complete the Learning Environment Survey tomorrow during the afternoon before meeting with your grade/ department teams at 3:20PM. Receipts for completing the surveys should be submitted to Ms. Delvecchio mailbox by 4pm.

The following two Mondays, 3/28/16 and 4/4/16,  will both be self-directed PD days; please plan accordingly.

Supervisor for Grades 3-5. Effective Monday teachers in grade 3 will report to Mr. Borelli and 4 and 5 to Ms. Mulé. They will address issues in these grades until we have a new AP.

102 Review, Issue 22: Focus

Posted on by mrkobot in Principal's Blog

Friday, March 4th, 2016

(Fine, Sunday, March 6th…)

We completed the first 3 rounds of our book study on Focus, sharing insightful comments, strategies, and concerns with one another. Collaborative thinking must precede collaborative doing, and we took an important step in preparing for the work we have to do next year and beyond. Here are some of the thoughts we heard in the discussion groups:

“Are we teaching effectively with ineffective standards?”
“We have to start calling out our students, we can’t let them be passive anymore.”
“We have to make students more independent – can I (the student) read this page in a text book and understand what is being taught?”
“We have to make decisions about how/what we teach. But when do we have time to do this? What control do we have?”

The blueprint for everything we do moving forward depends on a common 102 definition of: 1) what we teach, 2) how we teach, and 3) how we assess learning, and rest assure sufficient resources will be allocated for this work once grade/subject area/department teams are configured for next year. Per-session curriculum work will begin in May and continue throughout summer; stay tuned.

Highlights

 Expertly navigating the high school admissions process once again, Guidance Counselor Ms. Babakitis supported our 8th grade students throughout the year to maximize their chances of matching to the appropriate high schools. 14 students were accepted into specialized high schools this year, and I’m sure we’ll have even more next year as Ms. Babakitis is already working to bring Kaplan tutoring services to 102 for current 7th graders interested in taking the SHSAT next year.

Things You Need to Know (and Do)

 Meeting with Parents who are Upset: It has come to my attention that some parents may have used abrasive and accusatory language during parent-teacher meetings.  If you ever feel uncomfortable in how a parent is speaking to you, you should immediately call your AP or me for support and/or guidance. It’s not your job to be yelled at by parents; that’s my job.

Teacher-Use Laptops and Other Technology Requests: Please complete this 1-minute survey by Friday, March 11th regarding any laptops that was assigned to you for teacher-use. You can also request other technology items such as document cameras, projectors, etc.

Review the 102+ roster and attendance and communicate with your students’ 102+ teachers. It’s difficult to plan for effective interventions for unfamiliar students, and it’s important classroom teachers collaborate with after school teachers to best support struggling students. You should also monitor your students’ attendance in the 102+ program.

Monday PD: Teachers will briefly meet with their grade band APs at 2:45PM prior to breaking out in grade teams to review/reflect on the progress made regarding the target CCLS standards selected in September. A template will be provided for each grade team to guide and document the process.

102 Review, Issue 19: A Word on Math

Posted on by mrkobot in Principal's Blog

February 5th, 2016

A Word (or many words) on Math

For this midyear issue, let’s talk about math–specifically, Common Core math. Students continue to fare poorly on math state exams across the country because they’re tested on CCLS skills they were never adequately taught. And we cannot possibly expect schools to fully teach CCLS math unless we all know exactly what CCLS math is and what it isn’t. CCLS Math isn’t just a reorganization or a repackaging of standards; CCLS Math isn’t about injecting literacy in math; and CCLS math is absolutely not about adopting abstract, new-agey, non-sensible math methods as people on Facebook would lead you to believe.

What’s new about CCLS Math is that it targets the development of both foundational math skills AND problem-solving and critical thinking practices. It retains the expectation for students to be “book smart” (know rules, procedures, etc.) while attending to the “streets smart” practices that allow one to apply what they know to navigate and problem-solve in new or unfamiliar contexts. Here are the 8 math practices highlighted in CCLS:

  • Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
  • Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
  • Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
  • Model with mathematics.
  • Use appropriate tools strategically.
  • Attend to precision.
  • Look for and make use of structure.
  • Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

CCLS math practices pose significant challenges to schools because they require new ways of teaching, learning, and assessing. Doing more of the same math instruction long routinized in schools—whether as AIS or test prep or remedial learning—does nothing for students to acquire these practices. So what should we do? In “Mathematical Practices for Deep Understanding”, Ceri Dean and Susan M. Brookhart explain:

“These eight mathematical practices1  are the antidote to teaching mathematics as a series of “plug and chug” procedures (“Do this for this kind of problem”). Students who make sense of word problems don’t start by asking, “What kind of problem is this?” They start by trying to figure out what the problem means. What does the problem ask? What information is given, what needs to be found, and which mathematical procedures will lead to that information? Students will approach word problems with questions like these once they master the mathematical practices. They’ll not only be able to solve mathematically rich problems, but they’ll also appreciate math’s usefulness.

Students won’t master the standards for mathematical practice overnight, even after schools begin implementing the Common Core State Standards. The practices address habits of mind, thinking processes, and dispositions that help students develop “deep, flexible, and enduring understanding of mathematics” (Briars, Mills, & Mitchell, 2011, p. 20). Teachers will need to both give students problems that require them to use the practices and create environments that support student discourse and risk taking. And students will need a steady diet of feedback on their performance.”

Math educators will need to change three things to nurture these practices. Besides changing instructional strategies and materials, teachers will need to change their assessments (so items measure mathematical practices as well as computational skills), and make their feedback focus on students’ mathematical reasoning, modeling, and other practices—not just on correct answers. Instruction, assessment, and feedback will all need to focus more on higher-order thinking skills, communication, and collaboration.”

We’re not going to be able to do this work overnight, but it’s important we start learning and thinking about it when we plan lessons as we get closer to April. Reading the full text here is a good start.

 

Things You Need to Know

NYS Exams: The ELA exam for grades 3-8 will be administered from April 5th to April 7th, and the Math Exam from April 13th to April 15th. NY state has announced that Questar, not Pearson, will create the test questions and the test will be shorter and with no time limit for all students. More information to follow once I receive them.

ELA Scorers Needed April 18th to April 22nd: We will need to send 3 elementary teachers and 5 middle school teachers to score the ELA exams. Please email me by Wednesday 2/10 if you are interested in scoring. This is for ELA only.

Off Site PD Requests: As we count down to state testing, it is important for us to prioritize and protect instructional time for our students. Approvals for off-site PDs will only be given to mandatory sessions, and you should discuss with me in person prior to submitting such a request.

100 Days Celebration (K-5 Only): Yet another 102 celebration where I can offer little expertise, Mr. Borelli has graciously stepped up to lead the efforts along with Theresa. He will be sending out more information to all staff shortly.

New Prep Schedule Effective 2/9: Please find the new prep schedule here.

Happy Lunar New Year!

102 Review, Issue 13: Preparing for Principals Meeting

Posted on by mrkobot in Principal's Blog

 

December 11th, 2015

“What are you thinking?”

-All 40 district 24 principals to our students next Friday

Exciting news: 102 will be hosting the December principals meeting next Friday on the 18th, and all 40 principals from district 24 will be visiting our classrooms along with Superintendent Chan and her team. As a teacher I’ve always relished the opportunity to show the world what my students were doing and learning, and I am just as excited now as principal to open the doors of 102. Great things are happening here and people need to know about it.

In teams of 5-7 during periods 2-4, our guests will visit classrooms across all grades and subject areas to observe instruction at 102. To focus this work, I will be asking our guests to think about one question as they go from class to class: “What are the students thinking?”

Students learn best when they engage in activities that allow them to construct new understanding themselves through active inquiry and thinking, and not when they passively take notes or parrot information given by the teacher. It is crucial that you plan for every lesson, every day—not just next Friday—activities that facilitate the learning process via student thinking, discussion, and deep understanding. See Ms. Green’s exemplary practice of this approach below in the “Weekly Highlights” section.

Active student thinking is an effective approach to ensure core academic subject mastery, but it is perhaps the only viable method to help students develop a host of critical 21st century skills such as creative thinking, emotional intelligence, and teamwork. Our instructional focus for the school year reflects our commitment to support this work.

PS/IS 102 Instructional Focus

All students will acquire both core academic subject mastery as well as critical 21st century skills by engaging in rigorous thinking tasks that explicitly target the development of metacognitive skills in creative thinking, problem solving, teamwork, emotional intelligence, and civic responsibility.

2015-2016: DEFINE thinking rigor through common tasks, assessments, and projects in each grade and subject area. Inquiry groups will research, create and/or select exemplar tasks for each content area in every grade.

2016-2017: DELIVER instruction that attends to the instructional shifts necessary in providing access for all students to engage in rigorous thinking tasks. Inquiry teams will review student outcomes to discover effective teacher practices in promoting CCLS and 21st century skills.

2017-2018: DETERMINE a uniform set of best practices and curricula to support rigorous thinking in every lesson. Administration will align all school systems and expectations for teachers and students to create an environment designed for active learning through thinking.

We will come back in January to unpack this work in inquiry groups. More information to follow.

Weekly Highlights:

After assigning her students to use new vocabulary word “variant” in a sentence for homework a day earlier, Ms. Green expertly facilitated a small-to-whole class discussion activity to monitor student understanding and to scaffold learning for the students who need it. Patient and astute in her approach, Ms. Green guided her students to learn through discovery as they attend to her questions and counter-examples, building on one another’s understanding and thinking deeply about the term variant in meaning, form, and connotation. Her students were given the opportunity to construct new learning themselves and will have far greater retention than if they had learned by passively listening to a teacher’s explanation.

Things You Need to Know:

  • Staff Spotlight: The first installment of our “Staff Spotlight”is up! To help the community better get to know our amazing staff, students will interview teachers for this bi-monthly series. Please feel free to nominate a colleague you feel is deserving of the “Spotlight”. See here for an interview with Ms. Zwillickby Laura Umana of class 8-409.
  • Kind and Caring Wednesdays: The “Caught Being Kind and Caring” campaign is up and running. An initiative for students and teachers in grade 3-5, three students will be celebrated each week on “Kind and Caring Wednesdays” over the PA in the morning. Throughout the week students will be filling entries for classmates who have been caught doing something kind and caring, and we will randomly select three to highlight.

 

  • Write-Ups After Going on Trips: Please email me a blurb of any trips you take with your class along with some photos. 102 provides students with such a well-rounded and rich learning experience and I want to share your hard work with the community. I will use the write-up to create an entry on our website. See here for an example: http://ps102q.org/category/student-life/

102 Review, Issue 11: Asking the Right Questions in PLC

Posted on by mrkobot in Principal's Blog

 

November 20th, 2015

“Why did students struggle with this? How do we re-teach it?”

After 46 days of instruction, it should be clear to teachers who are their struggling students and what they each struggle with the most. However, knowing “who” and “what” is only one half of the equation in planning effective interventions for students in desperate need of them.

The article “Asking the Right Questions in PLC” argues that teacher teams should ask and answer four key questions when analyzing student outcomes:
–   What do we need to re-teach?

–   To whom do we need to re-teach it?

–   Why did students struggle with this?

–   How do we re-teach it?

Over-stressed and often lacking time to meet with colleagues, it’s easy for all of us to focus only on the first two questions and not allocating sufficient time to fully address the “Why” and the “How”. As we dig deeper to find ways to support students, consider the following questions when analyzing student work:

–   What do you think made some items difficult for students?

–   What are some possible sources of confusion?

–   What do students’ wrong answer choices tell us about their errors and misconceptions?

–   How did we originally teach this concept? What worked? What didn’t work?

–   What are the best strategies for addressing the misconceptions?

–   What are the best curriculum resources?

–   How do you think students will respond to an alternative instructional approach?

As we continue to plan for and deliver interventions for struggling students both during the regular school day as well as before/after school programs, we must be mindful of the fact that giving more of the same is not effective intervention. What didn’t work the first time will most likely not work the second or third time around; there’s a reason why each student struggle and intervention is all about finding out why.

Weekly Highlights:

Ms. Zecca, leading the charge once again in directing our school play, is working tirelessly to teach, model, organize, and support our amazing group of young actors’. It’s a tremendous undertaking to put a play together with professional adults, and I cannot imagine the weight Ms. Zecca carries AFTER a full day of incredible math instruction. Ms. Zecca, I bow to no one but you and Simba.

From Mr. Borelli: This week Mrs. Giampapa, Ms. Beceiro, Mrs. Chin, and Mrs. Foley put a Problem of Practice to the test.  The ReadyGENvocabulary portion was not engaging enough for their students to create the link between seeing the word and knowing the word.  Working together outside of our Monday PLCs, the 1st grade team, including Mrs. Khatibi and Mrs. Pera, have implemented several methods to move away from the passive “3,2,1” assessment to an active classroom where students are discussing attributes of words like “proud” and “enormous” through the use of small group Circle Maps, visuals, and pushing students to have a rationale for their thinking.  Each one of these classes looked different in their approach and in their results due to the authenticity of feedback from students. This was a great demonstration of purposeful planning and the willingness to seek new avenues of learning to bring out the best in our students.

From Ms. Atkins: Mrs. Le Roy invited Ms. Allen’s class into her classroom to share her “African Animal Dioramas”. Mrs. Le Roy shared her “Thin and Thick” question formulation strategy with the visiting class and the teachers then created student groups where host students guided their guests in a question and discussion session.

Mrs. LeRoy and Mrs. Allen teamed-up to incorporate strategies that engage students to learn through purposeful discussion and collaboration.  Their teamwork exposed students to diverse perspectives allowing them to learn from various points of views.

From Ms. Mulé: Ms. Merjave is working with class 6-309 to create a content based project in the computer lab.  Not only are the students in the class researching Inventions of Ancient Civilizations, they are learning how to put this information together on a PowerPoint presentation. In this lesson students not only acquired information they could apply in the Social Studies class, but added to the foundation of math skills that will prove useful in the coming years.

Things You Need to Know:

Attendance: As a professional courtesy, please try to email me as well as your immediate supervisor when you find out you have to take a sick day. We understand the many things that may prevent you from coming to work, and we want to appropriately plan for your students to learn in your absence. Please try and email us when you call sub-central to give us some time to coordinate coverage. Thank you for your understanding.

Thesis Throwdown Thinking Thursday: I’ve heard through the grapevines that a challenge will be broadcasted to a class Monday morning. Stay tuned!